Honduras: Wealthy Landowners Attempt to Quash Farming Collectives. Andrew Kennis, Truthout: “While 2011 has been a year filled with killings of activist farmers in the conflict-ridden region, August was an exceptionally violent month during what has been an exceptionally violent year…. Why is this violence occurring? What is the root of the conflict? Is the depiction of the situation in Aguan given by the Honduran government – only recently recognized internationally by the Organization of American States – an accurate reflection of what is going on? Bajo Aguan campesinos, as well as researchers and activists who have been visiting the region for decades worth of collective time, provided Truthout first-hand testimony in an effort to shed light on an otherwise largely overlooked, underreported and ongoing human and land rights catastrophe”: here.

Jewish Telegraphic Agency: The announcement by Honduras President Porfirio Lobo, that his country will next month vote at the UN in favor of Palestinian independence, aroused angry reactions at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. Israeli officials expressed surprise and disappointment at Lobo`s “ingratitude”, evoking the “close relations” between the Israeli Army and its Honduran counterpart. This was, in effect, an oblique half-admission of Israeli involvement in the 2009 coup that toppled Lobo`s left-leaning predecessor – an involvement hotly denied at the time: here.

TEGUCIGALPA, Jan 30, 2012 (IPS) – Last Friday marked two years since the inauguration of Porfirio Lobo as president of Honduras, amidst accusations of corruption, an unprecedented crime wave, and his lowest approval rating yet: here.

The Drug-War Femicides. Pastili Toledo, Project Syndicate: “The number of women murdered is increasing in most of Central America and Mexico. In some countries, such as Honduras, the increase is four times that of men. Moreover, many of these murders are committed with extreme violence – sexual savagery, torture, and mutilations – by perpetrators (often involved in organized crime) acting with a high degree of impunity… In Latin America, all of these crimes are known as ‘femicides’: murders of women precisely for being women”: here.

9 thoughts on “Honduran Dictatorship Burns Community to the Ground”

About 70 resident medical students at the Hospital Escuela (school hospital)—Honduras’s principal health care services center located in San Pedro Sula—returned to their duties on August 10 after a two-day strike. Emergency services were not struck during the stoppage.

The students struck over six points that they presented in a petition to the hospital’s director, the dean of the medical school, vice-minister of health Javier Pastor and other officials.

Two of the points concern the monthly scholarship. The students are postgraduates working to gain experience in their chosen specialties. They receive a scholarship of 10,000 lempiras (US$533) per month, which they have not received for the last two months. They also petitioned that the scholarship be raised to 15,000 (US$800).

Complaints included inadequate uniforms for emergency work, the scarcity of secure parking spaces in the facility (only 15 are allotted for students) and the conduct of a security employee, whom they accused of being rude and of maltreating patients.

The students returned to work after they were told that they would receive the back pay and that their other issues would be addressed. They agreed to postpone the issue of the raise until next year.

HONDURAS: The US State Department is offering visas to Honduran officials who had them revoked after taking part in the June 2009 coup that deposed former president Manuel Zelaya, a US embassy official confirmed on Tuesday.

“The Department of State has determined that some of the Hondurans whose eligibility for visas was restricted following the June 2009 coup d’etat are again eligible to be considered for visas,” said a US embassy spokesperson, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to discuss the new policy.

Gabriela Nunez, finance minister under Roberto Micheletti’s post-coup regime interi, said she received notice in June that she could reapply for a visa.

Members of the College of Middle Education Professors of Honduras (Copemh) blockaded Tegucigalpa’s Centroamerica Boulevard at the national educators’ social security agency Inprema on September 29, demanding back salaries for more than 20,000 public school teachers.

The Education Secretariat announced that it would pay the back salaries in two weeks, as soon as they receive the funds from the Finance Department, but Copemh countered that “since April the minister (Alejandro Ventura) has been lying to the people.”

According to Copemh president Jaime Rodriguez, there are teachers in every department in Honduras who haven’t received salaries for over two years. He added that many have lost their houses and cars, and some even are being sued because of the government’s delays.

On September 30, health workers in the Honduran Social Security Institute (IHSS) completed their third day of “progressive stoppage” to pressure the agency to approve benefit provisions in their collective contract. The workers’ union, Sitraihss, has been engaged in dialogue with Labor and Health department officials, but talks have stalled.

IHSS officials have predictably denounced the stoppage as a danger to patients, and IHSS director Mario Zelaya petitioned the Labor Ministry to have it declared illegal. The declaration would facilitate suspensions and firings of strikers.

Sitraihss President Hector Escoto told El Heraldo that they would try to compensate for any damage done to patients. “We will talk to the doctors so that the patients that lost their consultations can be attended to.”

TEGUCIGALPA — A total of 176 police officers from the same unit have been arrested in Honduras for alleged links to organized crime gangs, the Honduran Security Ministry said Thursday.

The mass arrests were made late Wednesday, said ministry spokesman Silvio Inestroza, who added that the suspects had links to criminal groups responsible for a range of crimes including murder, robbery and drug trafficking.

The suspects were from the same unit that employed eight officers suspected to have been involved in the killing of two college students last month, officials said.

The arrests also come amid a joint military-police crackdown this week on violent groups in the main Honduran cities that was launched in the wake of the killings.

Four of the officers involved were freed three days after they were detained, on condition that they return on Sunday — but none of them came back. Four of the other officers remain in custody.

President Porfirio Lobo fired the five most senior police commanders in the wake of the October 22 shooting.

One of the world’s most violent countries, Honduras is tipped to have the world’s highest murder rate by the end of the year — 86 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Violence Observatory in Tegucigalpa, a UN-backed monitor.

On average there have been 20 violent deaths a day in 2011, 85 percent of them caused by shootings.

In Honduras, a country slightly larger than Portugal with a population of eight million, violence has soared since a June 2009 coup toppled the country’s leftist president. But little has changed under Lobo, who took office in January 2010.

Aside from political violence, Honduras has become a transit point for cocaine from South America heading into the United States.

Drug gangs are better armed than the police, and have cash to bribe law enforcement and politicians.